Or Those Who Fail to Study History…

This is gonna be a rant, just so you know.

So over the weekend, a controversy got started on Twitter. Like when doesn’t a controversy get started on Twitter, right?

Anyway, this one involved someone saying that if you want to be published, you should read at least one book published in the last five years so you would know the trends in publishing. I think the word “beg” may have been used.

Needless to say, there was a bit of a brouhaha over that remark. ( I’m not going to provide links or screen captures, not so much because I don’t want to give anyone traffic but because I’m too tired and lazy to try and look up all the comments. Plus the conversation has splintered, and I’m sure I haven’t followed all of it. Also, I’m not going to name anyone because my purpose here is not to engage in any personal attacks, with one exception that should be obvious. I don’t know any of the parties involved, and I would be willing to have a civil discussion over books.)

This got an immediate response of don’t read anything published after 1980/1970/1950/etc from different people. I’ve noticed this is the direction my reading tends to be going lately, but I’m not going to get into the reasons for that in this post because there are multiple reasons.

Several people pointed out that if you are chasing trends in traditional publishing, which is what the person who tweeted seemed to be saying.  There’s a lot of truth in this statement. Because of the time lag involved in bringing a traditional novel to print, if an author sees a trend and writes a book that follows that trend, and if they are fortunate enough to have the book published by a major imprint, by the time the book sees print, the trend will have run out long ago.

A couple of editors at some minor venues began complaining about how older works didn’t have any emotional arcs but modern works did. I don’t remember if they made any statements about the older stuff being written primarily by men, or if that was someone else.  Some of the threads in the conversation intertwined. For what it’s worth, these two editors were ladies. (Can I say that, “lady editor”, I mean? Or is that sexist?) What does that have to do with anything? Well, women as a group are more concerned with emotions and relationships. Men, on the other hand, tend to like action and conflict and are less concerned about the inner emotional life of the characters in their fiction. Again, I mean as a group. There are individual differences, and your personal mileage may vary.

But I’m getting off topic. These women were making the claim that older science fiction and fantasy didn’t have the proper emotional arcs. These were blanket statements, with no qualifiers or mentions of exceptions.  Pardon me while I sweep up the straw left by their remarks.

I was stunned by how these two were showing their ignorance in public. You want older science fiction with emotional arcs? Let me suggest a few authors and stories. C. L. Moore, specifically Jirel of Joiry (“Black God’s Kiss”, “Black God’s Shadow“) and Northwest Smith (“Shambleau“, “Scarlet Dream“). Or how about Leigh Brackett, with such stories as “Black Amazon of Mars“, “The Dancing Girl of Ganymede“, “The Halfling“, “The Veil of Astellar“, or “Enchantress of Venus“? And let’s not forget about her collaboration with Ray Bradbury, “Lorelei of the Red Mist“?

You want an emotional arc? It’s pretty hard to find stories that exceed the works of these two ladies that contain such raw, primal emotions, and even harder to find ones that also contain action, adventure, and exotic landscapes. Not everything published in the pulp era was bug eyed monsters or Campbellian hard science. (And I maintain there is nothing wrong with either of those things.)

One person who teaches a class in sf listed some of the works they have the students read. Almost all of the authors were notable for the identity politics and social relevance of their works. The writers on that list that I’ve read were all people I tend to avoid reading.

The person who made the original post has received enough pushback that they have stated that they never said don’t read older works. In fairness, this is true. But that certainly was the implication, at least of everyone who commented in support of the original tweet.

There was also a strong undertone of traditional publishing was the only thing being considered. Indie works were never mentioned.

There’s a lot of exciting stuff being done outside the traditional publishing ecosystem. More than I can keep up with at the moment.  You’ve seen some of my reviews of those authors here.

And there’s a lot great fiction in the old pulps and paperbacks of the 30s, 40s’, and up through, yes, even the 90s. If you’re going to write in a field, you should know something of the history and what has been done before.  We’ve all seen the mainstream author who decides to write a fantasy or science fiction novel, and it’s promoted as being new and original when in reality someone else did the same thing a generation earlier, and most likely did it better. We’re starting to see that kind of thing within the genre now by people who refuse to consider anything written more than, oh, say five years ago. (Yes, that was a cheap shot. I’m a bad boy.)

So to state just for the record: We look at a lot of vintage works here at Adventures Fantastic, on the main blog and on the others. An upcoming example is a three part essay from John Bullard on Howard’s influences when writing “Beyond the Black River”.  John has an interesting and compelling take on the sources Howard drew from.

But we don’t just limit ourselves to the original pulp era. There is good stuff being published today from both the indie and the traditional side of things, even though the latter may be a bit thin on the ground. Case in point, the next review will, unless something comes up, be over The Bone Ships by R. J. Barker. It’s good.

As for me, no one is going to tell me what I can read or write. What I can’t find a home for, I’ll publish myself. I’m going to read and write whatever the heck I darn well please. I suggest you do the same.